As Larkspur celebrates its Centennial year the city takes considerable pride in its historic homes and buildings and a downtown district that has won a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. But it's safe to say that the original inhabitants, even up to the turn of the last century, wouldn't recognize the place - although some might guess the origin of several street names.

     Certainly the Coast Miwok people who lived along Corte Madera Creek would be amazed to see the schools, homes, parks and shopping centers that cover the marshes and streams where they fished and hunted. As late as the 1870s salt marsh extended as far as today's Magnolia Avenue and Doherty Drive, skirted Palm Hill, and pushed far up Tamalpais Avenue in Corte Madera. The hills were dense with stands of redwood, oak, buckeye, and laurel, which provided nourishment as well as shade and firewood.

     While the land had been divided by Mexican land grants as early as 1834, it took logging operations that started in the mid-19th Century to really start the process of transforming Larkspur's landscape. In fact, Larkspur's history really began with an authentic Gold Rush enterprise. In April of 1849 31 men, organized as the Baltimore and Frederick Mining and Trading Company, boarded the schooner Creole in Baltimore Harbor. Five months later, having crossed the Isthmus of Panama on mule back and transferred to an English brig, they arrived in San Francisco to await their steam-driven sawmill, which they had sent separately around Cape Horn.

     In early November the group sailed up Corte Madera Creek to a landing point near today's Bon Air Road and hauled their equipment to the mouth of a wooded canyon, today known as Baltimore Canyon. For the next decade, under various owners, teamsters, loggers, and sawyers proceeded to clear the canyon and hills of virgin redwood trees. By 1851 the town had a population of 500 men and 3 women -- but logging couldn't sustain the development of a real community.

     It wasn't long before enough land had been cleared to allow the start of farming and ranching operations. Patrick King grazed dairy cows where shoppers now visit shops and restaurants. R. S. Brown, foreman of the Baltimore and Frederick mill, farmed the Baltimore Park area. Jonathan Bickerstaff, who built Larkspur's first house in 1852, extended his ranch from present-day Magnolia to the site of Redwood High School. Other industries sprang up to serve the burgeoning Bay Area. Pierre Remillard started making bricks in Marin in 1870 and later constructed a large kiln on land on the San Quentin Peninsula that is now within Larkspur's city limits. In its heyday, 1891 to 1915, this historic continuously firing kiln turned out 500,000 bricks per year.

     Another brick making operation in Larkspur began in 1879 when a French baker named Claude Callot bought property on Magnolia from Patrick King and built a small kiln. The bricks went to San Francisco by barge from a nearby dock. Soon, with the help of Jean Escalle, who later took over the business, Callot had added a vineyard and winery to his modest empire. Escalle wine was delivered two or three times a week by horse-drawn buggy until Prohibition and the grapevine pest Phylloxera ended production.

     By the 1880s, Larkspur was making the transition to a residential community, aided by the development of hotels, campgrounds, and "summer shacks" that attracted visitors who often decided to stay. Mover-and-shaker Charles W. Wright bought the King dairy ranch in 1887, had the town surveyed, and auctioned off lots "large enough to pasture horses and raise chickens," according to sales brochures. Hoping to persuade the North Pacific Coast Railroad to locate a station in the town, Wright built five Victorian cottages and asked his wife Georgiana to suggest a name for the station. When the station was built in 1891the railroad agreed to call it "Larkspur," which Mrs. Wright had mistakenly called the lupine growing on the hills.

     Wright also helped establish Larkspur as a destination resort in 1891 by building the 80-room Larkspur Inn at the end of Sycamore Avenue. The four-story hotel featured a bowling green, croquet courts, and riding paths and was always full. Nevertheless it wasn't rebuilt after it burned in 1896. But there were other resorts: the Bon Air Hotel near the site of Marin General Hospital attracted a shady clientele of trysting San Francisco businessmen and their ladies, while the Hotel Merwin, later the Blue Rock Inn, became a stopping point for travelers on the main stagecoach route.

     During the years leading up to its incorporation on March 1, 1908, Larkspur gradually built the trappings of a full-fledged city without losing its reputation as "Jag Town," where fun and frolic were the order of the day. More and more cottages climbed the hills while hundreds of flat-bottomed houseboats anchored on the creek. Commercial buildings, many still standing, went up along Magnolia. A wood-framed school house was built on the Larkspur-Corte Madera School site in 1895 and soon became the venue for the first church services. Regular train service from Sausalito brought more visitors and the first wave of commuters to the burgeoning town. With a population approaching 600 - double that during the summer - Larkspur was ready to take its place as a full-fledged California city.

     (This article is based on the 1991 edition of Larkspur Past & Present, a history and walking guide researched and written by members of the Larkspur Heritage Committee, now the Larkspur Heritage Preservation Board. Copies of the guide are available at the Larkspur Library. An updated edition will be published later this year.)

Click here for a complete Centennial Year Calendar.